


Veneration

by Brackets_002



Series: Beyond the Pale and related works [3]
Category: Hollow Knight (Video Game)
Genre: Beyond the Pale universe, F/M, crack fic??? i guess???, definitely not canon to that verse in any way tho jesus christ, i didn't want it to be EVEN MORE SO, i mean it doesn't make sense even internally so, i'll go back and edit it later sorry mae, look i wanted this to be a christmas present and it's SO GODDAMN OVERDUE, unrevised first draft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-01
Updated: 2019-01-01
Packaged: 2019-10-02 01:25:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17255009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brackets_002/pseuds/Brackets_002
Summary: The Queen of Hallownest takes some time to read through the abandoned journals of the bug in whose Spire she now lives. The results are...unexpected, but not unwelcome.





	Veneration

**Author's Note:**

  * For [QueenEgg](https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenEgg/gifts).



> This is overdue. Shit.  
> Originally this was supposed to be a Hornet/Lurien Christmas present for QueenEgg. It still is, technically, but it ended up simultaneously being an exploration of an alternate interpretation of what we know of Lurien the Watcher. Plus, anyone who's read a Brackets Fic™ knows how I meander, so, like, this ended up being eleven pages and probably three-quarters of it being unnecessary, self-contradictory, or OoC. I promise I'm gonna go back and revise it later, but for now I just want it _published._ It's bad, but it's published. That'll do for now.
> 
> There's stuff I'm doing with the dream realm and the Void in here that's....like, not only not canon, but probably outright contradicts canon? And I definitely wouldn't do it for any other story than this very specific one? The main reason for it here is that this pretends to take place a while after _Beyond the Pale,_ despite the fact that it definitely isn't an actual part of that continuity in any way. That didn't happen on purpose. I only know how to write one type of post-game universe.
> 
> Finally, an apology to Mae: I'm intruding on your monopoly on this ship with a bad fic. It's not the same Lurien as the one you write; not even really the same Hornet. Hope you don't mind.

Just off of the elevator to the Watcher’s Spire, behind a smashed statue and the curtains that flanked it, a small alcove was lit by only a single dim lamp. Stone tablets marked with the white ink of a writing brush sat piled on the floor of the chamber. An easel had once occupied the center of the room, but had since been collapsed and leaned against a far wall, and the final, large tablet that had rested on it was now hanging on the wall between an earlier two. In between all these tablets, the journals of a bug long dead, a high-backed chair was almost an afterthought, pushed off-center and precariously placed.

The only splash of brightness in this little room was the pale mask and crimson cloak of the Queen of Hallownest, who sat slumped in the chair with her head lolling to one side and a smaller tablet held limply in her hands. Hornet had fallen asleep reading.

* * *

 

She had thought very little of the alcove when she had made the Spire her home; it had clearly been a spot for Lurien to hide away while writing, but she couldn’t think of a reason why she wouldn’t do that in the Spire itself. For awhile she had been content to ignore Lurien’s journals like she did most of his things, pushing it to the side and setting up a small desk space and a cot for herself. But when she had put her head into the room some time ago she had caught sight of the tablet that bore Lurien’s last words and paused; something about it had struck her.

 _Sleep beckons eternal and these words become my last._  
_Though my gaze shall no longer fall upon this city, I will act forever in its protection.  
_For King, for bug, for Hallownest, I head now to my rest.__

__

_He died for Father,_ she had thought immediately, as she tended to. It was not the first time she had been baffled by the loyalty that the Pale King had inspired. Lurien had been by all indication an intelligent bug, yet even he had been seduced by that Wyrm’s charisma. What had once been a bitter fury had settled some thanks to the sheer frequency of this train of thought; now, all she really felt was pity for the Watcher.

And yet, she had thought as she had stepped through the curtains properly, that was an oversimplification, and it did him no more justice than the King himself had. By his own statement he had given himself to more than her father. She reached out a black finger, tracing over the glyph that represented the word _Hallownest,_ and wondered if the kingdom meant as much to her as it had to him. _When, Hornet, was the last time you loved_ anything _enough to willingly die for it?_ She had fought for Hallownest but that wasn’t the same.Those battles she had intended to win. _Have I ever_ sacrificed _anything? Or have I_ imposed _sacrifice on others, like he did?_

That wasn’t a question Hornet enjoyed asking herself, for the only answer she had was the memory of having steered her sibling towards their own demise. She may not have fully realized at the time what she had been helping take shape, but the way she had urged the Ghost to find a more permanent solution to the plague, now that they had brought exactly that about, left her with a guilt she didn’t quite know how to put to rest.

_Is it my inheritance to ask others to die in my place? Is the true legacy of the Pale King to manipulate innocents into conflicts that we should have dealt with ourselves? To force the hands of those who love deeper than we do?_

And suddenly Hornet had felt sick. She had turned away from the alcove and leaped off of the broken statue, hurtling upwards until she caught herself on the edge of the elevator shaft where it emerged into the Watcher’s Spire. Miserably she had sat alone, going over paperwork until even the lumafly of her lantern had flickered in fatigue, and then she had buried herself under the thin blankets of her cot and dreamed of a once-shining realm, overtaken by shadow and cold.

But she had risen the next day and stared for several minutes at the painting that had once sat beside Lurien’s dais. It was a lovingly rendered depiction of the city that surrounded her, from a perspective that could only have come from the telescope that rested on the opposite side of the elevator. She knew the angle well, having stared out at the city often enough by now, and she admired for the first time the craftsmanship that had gone into the picture. It had been painted with a careful attention to detail that, she knew, only came from passion. She had hastily spun Soul into a few feet of silk, which she had manipulated like an extension of her arm long enough to finally hang the large painting on the Spire wall. As the thread had dissipated back into drops of pale light which she reabsorbed, she had gently rubbed her thumb against the lower right corner of the canvas, where a small signature of Lurien’s face sat.

 _Who were you, Watcher,_ she had silently asked the signature, _that you loved Hallownest so much more than it deserved?_

Of course, she hadn't had the opportunity to find out immediately. She was the Queen of Hallownest, and there was work to be done. But Hornet had set a day aside in her schedule to pour over Lurien's old journals and learn how he saw his sacrifice. And she had begun that day by hanging his last words on the wall.

The first thing that Hornet had learned when she began reading was that Lurien had been a timid, anxious bug, and had barely interacted with the populace of the city which he claimed to love so much. References to a bug named Osservá made it clear to her that their position as a trusted companion was a rare one, but one that the Watcher was dependent on in a way which made Hornet worry for the dead bug. He seemed to have had a deep fear of even so much as leaving the Spire. Looking down on the city through his telescope was the only way he had ever actually watched the bugs of his beloved kingdom for any real length of time. The Spire she lived in now had been both his refuge and his prison.

But though she worried for him as she read and pieced together what she could, Lurien himself seemed to dwell on this very little. In fact, the bug rarely spoke at all about himself in his journals, and she formed the shape of him out of the words he had written around himself. But the rare occasions that Lurien was the forefront of his own thoughts told her things about him that took her by surprise.

_I see so much suffering through my telescope, among the lowest caste of Hallownest._  
_How can I aid those afflicted bugs? What services can my money provide?_  
_Many of my peers do nothing to help the poor, but I find I cannot follow their example._  
_“The King helps those who help themselves,” the saying goes; I feel we are meant to help those who cannot._

This was more than Hornet had expected from the richest bug outside of the Wyrm himself; perhaps her experiences with Emilitia had left her too bitter to expect basic decency from her likes. Her brow rose at the ideas Lurien had written beneath his concerns, and she memorized a few for her own consideration.

It was an entry shortly after this one that Lurien had attempted to venture outside his Spire for the first time in years. Written in a trembling hand, the tablet described his journey past his entryway, across the bridge over the city square, and his terror towards each and every bug he had encountered on the way, no matter their appearance or apparent class. He had finally stopped at the great gates of the city, next to the statue of Mighty Hegemol, and stared out over the bridge beyond and its ceiling of thorns—thorns that, he had envisioned in horrific detail, could easily fall and trap him in place, binding him, digging into his shell, drawing blood, blinding him, slicing his skin apart—and as the journal described his collapse, Hornet set it down and stood sharply, taking a deep breath and walking in a tight circle around the alcove to calm herself. Obviously the journal would end with his safety, as evidenced by its existence and that of the several dozen piled around her. Yet she had found herself empathizing with his fear, and was surprised to realize her heart was racing and the thick knot of her childhood anxiety had settled again in her stomach. She shook herself, sat down again and read about how Lurien, crying, had been helped back to his Spire by a city guard. The next several journals detailed the hiring process of the bugs Hornet knew as the Watcher Knights.

Hornet’s worry about Lurien had become an empathy at some point, and she found herself smiling as he had settled back into a routine that he enjoyed. What observations he made special note of in the bugs he saw on the streets below illustrated what he loved about them. Attention was paid to the way a young child had clutched a tablet to her chest while splashing through puddles, the way two lovers parting in the rain had held each other’s hands as long as possible. When a bug had stood still in the rain, head tilted upwards and eyes closed, Lurien had wondered what they must have thought as the water had run down their face and darkened their blue cloak. Lurien had watched, fascinated, as Menderbugs had repaired a broken rooftop, and when a musician had performed in the square he had, without hearing a note, sent Osservá down to pay them handsomely. Hornet had never had any particular affection for her citizens beyond a self-imposed duty to protect them and see them safe, but at the stroke of Lurien’s brush she felt her heart swelling to consider them anew.

And then the King had come.

The King had come, and Hornet’s eyes glazed over as Lurien spent paragraphs gushing over his beauty, his warming light, and the aura of peace and affection he had radiated. His anxiety overtaken and calmed by the Wyrm’s mere presence, he had been almost unconscious of his movements as he had leaned into the Pale King’s hand, hanging on his every melodious word as the King had heaped praise upon him and suggested his aid in helping along certain reforms...and Hornet hurled the stone tablet into the wall hard enough to shatter it. Trembling from her constant hatred brought to the surface again, her mouth tasting of bile, she folded her arms beneath her cloak and looked at her own feet.

 _And so,_ she thought, _Father gained control of the richest bug in Hallownest beneath himself. Would that he were alive so I could kill him myself._

Entries after that seemed the work of a more confident bug, one who ventured from his tower regularly and even spoke to other members of his caste. Hornet noted bitterly how these acts of bravery were without exception for the purpose of somehow serving the King, but even remembering this she admitted herself to be happy that he had found a purpose that could carry him from his lonely sanctuary and let him walk among at least a few of his beloved bugs. He was still a prisoner, perhaps even more so than he had been, but he was a far happier one now, and Hornet was grateful for that.

The first reference to the infection was a brief comment about an orange haze rumored among poorer bugs. It was subtle enough that Hornet hadn’t realized what she had read until several sentences later, and with a jolt had gone back to reread it with a creeping horror. Leaning back from the tablet, she realized how the rest of the journals would go. A quick reference to orange pus here, a comment about some kind of riot there, until infected bugs rampaged across the square while he watched and his journals became fearful and desperate—all his fretting, of course, pointing towards the King’s light as a solution. Lurien would let himself be steered to his own end in the King’s service.

She was surprised, then, when Lurien had instead started writing about patients at the hospital he funded. Though his journals were still filled with quasi-worship of the Wyrm, there were descriptions of the effects of the infection that the hospital documented, mixed with worry and reminders to himself to increase the institution’s budget. He seemed to possess a remarkable understanding of the plague’s potential scale, worrying often that they simply didn’t have the room to treat every one of the sick.

The moment of the final realization, too, took a different and far more horrible shape than what Hornet had expected. The journal was smudged, its words obscured by the tears that Lurien had spilled onto it, but Hornet managed to read most of what he had written. Infected patients, violent and apparently mindless, had risen from their beds practically as one and laid waste to the hospital. Three-fourths of the doctors had been slaughtered. Structural damage had forced the hospital’s closure, and an evacuation had only allowed the escape of a few. As Hornet bent over the tablet of Lurien’s despair, tears formed in her own eyes, and she pulled away to wipe her face and avoid ruining the journal entirely. Even with the incident long past, the infection destroyed and the Radiance dead, her heart broke with the Watcher’s.

There was one more entry of note before Lurien, terrified and grieving, had gone willingly into the overbearing, controlling peace of the King’s influence. The Wyrm himself had appeared to him the day after the hospital’s destruction, and among their conversation had floated the idea of herding the infected citizens into camps. Even reading dead words on stone Hornet could feel the heat of Lurien’s rage at the very idea. It was the first and only time that the anxious Watcher had raised his voice to the King, and at the strength of this response the monarch had backtracked, first stating that the internment would only be until a cure was found, then dropping the idea entirely. But as alternate solutions began to be discussed, Lurien sank once again under his Pale thrall.

Lurien had known where he had stood. Even as she read the entries approaching his sacrifice, Hornet was proud of him for that.

* * *

 

She wasn’t quite sure when she had fallen asleep, but when she opened her eyes again it was to find the alcove she had sat for hours in filled with the dark fog of the Void, the light of lumaflies swallowed by the air and doing little except sharpen the darkness. Only her pale mask cast any real light, more than it ever did in the waking world, and as she sat up and her cloak opened slightly she realized the King’s Brand on her chest shone brightly as well.

She looked around the alcove. The journals were gone, and a small dream catcher wove itself in the air. Understanding where she was now, she rose from the chair she had fallen asleep on and leaned enough to glance out of the curtains and through the window of the elevator shaft beyond.

Once a golden light had filled the Dreamscape, permeated with the presence of the Radiance to whom it had been both domain and cage. But ever since the day the Ghost had entered the Black Egg and filled it with the Void, when she had found herself here in her dreams it had been filled with darkness, black fog rising up from a bottomless pit and towards an empty sky. The eyes of her siblings’ Shades and her own mask served as the only illumination here anymore. Hornet had thought to ask Quirrel if he ever came here too in his sleep, but she had realized that an answer of no would be a confused one, and had been putting it off.

Another presence got her attention within the alcove she still stood inside. A furious heartbeat and breaths that bordered on hyperventilation. Hornet turned, not totally sure what to expect, and, squinting through the darkness, made out a small shape with a cloak and a single, staring eye.

She stepped closer to Lurien, who had pressed himself to the far wall in terror, and allowed her mask to chase away some of the shadows. The light reflected off of Lurien’s own mask and he pushed himself even tighter to the wall, an undignified squeak making its way out of him. Hornet stopped short, but continued to stare at him curiously. As her horns swayed to one side with the tilt of her head, he began to stammer.

“This is, this is a dream,” he managed eventually. “Otherwise Osservá would be here.”

Hornet nodded. “Yes,” she said, “but I think it’s my dream. The alternative makes little sense. Do you know who I am, Watcher? I don’t know if you ever met Herrah.”

“I-I didn’t, no,” Lurien replied. He was still pressed to the wall, an image that would have been comical if Hornet hadn’t known he was terrified. She took a step away, and though it was hard to see now he seemed to relax slightly. “...No. But I know _of_ her, one of my...uh, my f-fellow Dreamers. I don’t think, I don’t know if I’ve ever met you, but maybe something about—something about you is familiar.” He had shifted his position slightly; still with his back to the wall, but no longer pushing into it. It seemed as though something about Hornet was setting him at ease. “It could be both of our dreams. Shared dreams are possible, I think. If we both, we both are in the Dreamscape--”

“You’re long dead, Lurien,” Hornet interrupted. “I say it’s nonsensical for this to be your dream because you were killed in your sleep. My sibling absorbed your essence and broke your Seal some time ago now. I don’t think there’s enough of you left to truly exist even here.” As Lurien froze, trying to process this, Hornet contemplated him. “Yet you don’t seem like a construct of my imagination. If you were I feel that it would be easier to see you, even in such low light as this. And the image of you I formed...looks different. How much do you remember? That may illuminate things; I’ve yet to finish your journals.”

But Lurien, who had started at the casual revelation that he was dead, was frozen in place now, stammering to himself. Every few seconds he cast panicked glances at his own hands, as though half-expecting them to vanish at any moment. “I...” he gasped. “...I...” Hornet’s curiosity morphed into concern as he began to shake. She took another look out of the curtains, then returned to him, and found herself holding out a hand to him despite herself. An affectionate bug she was not, of course; the companions she had amassed as Queen were exceptions to a longstanding rule, and even then she had spent much time with Quirrel and the others before considering them friends and allowing herself intimacy with them. But the desire to protect was strong. As a guardian of ruins, as the warrior queen of a small population, as an elder sister who had realized that position too late, she loathed to see a bug succumbing to fear as Lurien was.

“Would you like to go up to your main chamber?” she offered. “I can help you; we seem to be missing an elevator.”

The Watcher, despite his mounting anxiety, laughed. He hesitated for several seconds, looking at her offered hand, before reaching out and grabbing it, and Hornet gently led him outside and grabbed him around the waist. He squeaked something at the contact, but then as Hornet leaped into the air he cried out louder, clinging to her. Hornet pulled her mantis claw from beneath her crimson cloak as she jumped and dug it into the wall several feet above the broken statue, then kicked off and repeated the process near to the top of the shaft. In only three jumps, they had reached the top and Hornet released her passenger, who stumbled away.

The Spire had that look typical to structures within the Dreamscape, as though it was both a mirror of the architecture of the waking world and was being constructed by the minds of those it stood before. It held Lurien’s telescope, all tarnish gone and restored to a shining glory Hornet had never seen it with, and a lavish bed and an easel with paints ready to be used. But it also had the small cot Hornet slept on, her needle beside it, and the crude kitchenette she used to prepare meals. It held bookcases and candles and lumafly lamps, giving the whole scene a dim glow by which they could see all of this. It held the dais.

It was this stone plinth to which Lurien made his way first, and upon reaching it slowly ran a hand across its surface. The carvings of complex spells slid by under his fingers. “I...remember,” he breathed. “I remember being helped up onto this, and then...fading into Dream. I remember some kind of orange light? It grew brighter, but then there was a...a dark shadow—no. A child of some kind hounded me, attacked me, and pulled me into themselves...and then I remember—” he stopped suddenly. “The, the Hollow Knight failed. I saw through the child’s eyes, I can _almost...almost recall...Radiance!”_ he shouted. Whirling back to Hornet, who was standing silently and allowing him to speak, he said in a rush, “They challenged her, they _killed_ her, dragged her into a sea of the Void, of their siblings...I _do_ know you, Hornet.”

The named Queen blinked. She nodded slowly, piecing together what was happening with a careful train of thought. “That was more than I knew for sure,” she said with a hand to her chin. “I suspect you _are_ truly Lurien the Watcher, then. So when Ghost absorbed you, your consciousness remained within them. Perhaps, now that they have merged with the Void and filled this realm with it, you are free to manifest within it to those who think of you.”

A thought struck her. Turning sharply towards the window, she stared at the Void outside and thought as hard as she could of her mother. Thread started to form at her fingertips, her needle several feet away seemed to flash in response to her concentration; without realizing it she had walked forward until her mask was only inches from the pane—but all she could see was her own glowing reflection in the glass. No sign of Herrah. She sighed and closed her eyes, resting her head on its cold surface. If it had been that easy to see her again...she didn’t know what she would have done. Slowly wasted away in the waking world, probably, instead spending all her time in the Dreamscape with her mother. It was better this way, she told herself, and didn’t believe it.

“Your Grace,” she heard from behind her, and turned to see Lurien bowing low. “Daughter of my beloved King. Spawn of his bloodline, heir to his throne. Sister to the savior of Hallownest, I venerate you.”

She bristled slightly. Straightening, she felt her features sharpen into a glare at the bug who faced the floor. “Rise,” she commanded, a harshness in her tone that wasn’t fully meant for him. When Lurien stood upright again, looking surprised at her heated tone, she asked, “Are you truly so devoted to the bug who seduced you? He who won you over with a few words of shallow praise, yet with his own intentions so blatantly self-centered? You’ve seen things through the eyes of one of his victims; you know the horrors he committed. How have you retained _any_ love for the Pale King, to the point of debasing yourself to his child?”

Lurien said nothing; he looked mortified, as though he had been struck. Hornet could see him shaking slightly again as he looked away, a hurt sigh escaping him. Her glare softened. She hadn’t meant to wound him with her retort; rubbing a hand across her face and swallowing her pride, she stepped closer and put a hand on his arm.

“I understand he had a...charisma,” she said, with an effort to keep her voice soft. “I understand that his aura calmed your phobias enough to leave your tower. I’m sorry I snapped at you, Lurien, but _you_ must understand that I _hate_ my father. He slaughtered the Vessels that didn’t match his goals, and bound the one who he believed did to bear his mistakes for him. He abandoned Hallownest and its citizens when the Hollow Knight’s sacrifice and your own proved ineffective at stopping the Radiance. He convinced Herrah to give herself to your cause by giving her a child...and I am an insufficient price for that sacrifice. And you--” she took his hand from him and gestured vaguely around them. “You were witness to the inequality among his subjects. He _fostered_ that. He subjected the poorest castes to legal abuses that would break any bug. The system of a few bugs living in the luxury created by the toil of many was his design, not a consequence of some noble intent. You thought and fretted about that inequality at such length, why do you still love the bug at its center?”

“I don't know if I can explain it,” Lurien whispered. Nevertheless, he seemed like he was trying, and Hornet remained silent as he struggled with himself. “He...he loved Hallownest,” he added eventually. “Maybe not how I did, but he did adore the Kingdom that he had made--all of it, one way or another. I don’t believe, looking back, that he could see the bugs who were a part of it...they must have seemed so small, so far away to one on the scale he reached. He gave bugs individuality, but perhaps could not recognize it himself. He saw Hallownest as a whole, and the growth of the whole that that...inequality allowed for. He believed--and I agreed with him--that there was no faster way to grow than through such a system.” He sounded ashamed as he said it. Looking nervously at Hornet, whose expression was unreadable, he wrung his hands. “...I don’t know why the cost didn’t occur to me…”

“His influence, I’d expect,” Hornet interrupted. Her voice was tired, but patient. “A kingdom is made of bugs, Lurien. If most of its population is destitute, what do its greatest luxuries matter?” Lurien nodded silently, and Hornet gently patted his shoulder as she walked around him. It was an awkward gesture, not the reassuring one she had attempted. As she turned away and started for her own cot, she added, “If it helps, this is by far the most pleasant conversation I’ve ever had with a bug of the upper class. You are far more reasonable than the surviving rich bugs I have to deal with daily. Most of them, I’m convinced, value Geo more than their own lives, never mind anyone else’s. I’ve never before encountered one who truly attempted to do the right thing.” She looked back around at him as she sat on the edge of her bed and smiled at him..

The Watcher blanched to see it. Hastily looking away, he put a hand to his face as if to shield her from his vision; which didn’t seem to be an anxious gesture, merely a nervous one. “I--uh--” he choked out. A small giggle escaped him, sharply cut off. Hornet tilted her head to see him fidget, yet couldn’t bring herself to drop the smile. “Tha--I, um, I’m grateful to...hear that judgement of my--of me,” he managed. Lurien closed his singular eye momentarily, gathering himself. “Survivors, you said. Um. How many bugs does Hallownest house, with the infection come and gone? What’s become of the kingdom?”

As he managed to look at her again, looking more flustered than perhaps the circumstance warranted, Hornet sighed and said, “It endures. We number nearly one hundred now, with Deepnest merged with us and the Colosseum emptied. Under my and my assistants’ lead, agriculture has been reestablished and work is being done to recover the knowledge of the Archives. Our growth is...slow. Sometimes set back. But occasionally a traveler emerges from the wastes beyond the cliffs, and when they do they find a sanctuary.”

“And you rule over them?” Lurien asked. He was fascinated, but couldn’t help but add, “You inherited the King’s throne after all?”

“The irony is not lost on me,” Hornet muttered with a flat stare. Glancing down at her crimson cloak, touched here and there with silken embroidering in patterns reminiscent of both Herrah and Hallownest’s architecture, she added, “Some have taken to calling me the Red Queen.” She didn’t say--Lurien didn’t need to hear to know it--that she worried that someday the title would be _all_ she was known as. All trace of her old, true identity gone. Reduced to a monarch, described with a color.

The one-eyed aristocrat stared at her for a time. His embarrassment had faded, and the fascination he had gained with her had swelled in its place. The bug who sat in front of him was a creature unlike any he had seen or heard of before. She was, in many ways, exactly like his King--not that he would say it aloud, even if he hadn’t suspected she already knew. She shared his commanding presence, even when relatively vulnerable as she was now. They had the same devotion to what they saw as their responsibilities, though that devotion obviously took different shapes, and the light that drifted off of her mask in this realm like ink through water was a diluted version of the light that the Pale King had exuded, the light that would blind you if you stared too long, the light that filled up your mind and left little room for what had been there before. The venom on her tongue as she spoke about her father was, in an irony that made him want to laugh, the same venom that her father had spat when talking of the plague. Traces of her ruthlessness matched his, but all this was only given shape and made apparent because of the sharp, dramatic differences between them. The white that they shared was only recognizable because of the sea of red that defined it, allowed it to mean anything: the red that was hers and hers alone.

Her focus on individuals over the great kingdom that they made up.

Her perseverance, despite clear exhaustion with her situation.

Her wrath towards her father was not for a violation of her domain, but for the lives he had destroyed in trying to hold onto it--the lives Lurien, who had half-lived inside her sibling for a time, now stood aware of.

Though he was still nervous, he was no longer _afraid,_ but that peace had not come through a pale, placating light but from the words that they had exchanged. The way they had spoken together, even when she had been angry, _warmed_ him for reasons he couldn’t quite understand.

“May I sketch you?” he whispered, hesitant to break the silence that had grown into the room. When Hornet looked up at him in confusion he hastily added, “I don’t mean to impose. I wouldn’t even consider it, but it...it allows my hands something to do.” While this was true, he was also desperate to record the curve of her horns and the steadiness of her posture, even leaned forward. The drawing might disappear when she eventually awoke, but so would he, and that wasn’t the point anyway. When Hornet shrugged and murmured “Do as you like,” he picked up a stone tablet and an ink brush, leaning against the stone dias to brace himself. In white ink he began to trace how her horns leaned to one side as her head tilted.

“Is it right, do you think,” she said suddenly, “the way I’ve tried to rule? My mother did not have enough time to teach me how to do this before she joined you as a Dreamer.”

Lurien glanced up at her just long enough to see how her cloak encircled her, but in that glance he saw the look of uncertainty on her face. As the basic shape of the garment formed on the smooth stone surface, he thought in silence before saying, “Well, I don’t know for sure how you rule. I’ve only ever heard your own descriptions of it. But on that alone, I don’t think there has ever been a better monarch, no matter the nation.”

“Heh. If you saw Hallownest as it is today, you would dismiss it as a mere village in the middle of a ruin.”

“Well it did recently survive an apocalypse,” Lurien replied, looking up at her. “A village rising out of a ruin is the only thing one could reasonably expect so soon after such an infection as the Radiance. Take pride in what you’ve done, Hornet.”

“I do,” Hornet said, but no more. She watched him draw for a while, examining his posture and the stroke of his hand, more and more easygoing. The words of his journals were in the back of her mind. She recalled the joy with which he had described a musician in the rainy square below the Spire and the work of Menderbugs. The happiness of those entries was the same happiness she could see traces of in the strokes of his brush. There was much she wanted to ask him--did he regret becoming a Dreamer? did he resent Ghost for killing him, if that was what it had been at all?--but to disturb him from what brought him so much joy seemed a crime. She delighted, she realized abruptly, in seeing him so happy.

Eventually Lurien set down his ink brush, looking down at the dark blue slab in his hand. “I need red to finish this,” he muttered, and turned on his heel as though this project was the only thing in the world to him--and perhaps in the moment, it was. He walked around the dais to his painting supplies, looking for a bottle of red paint, but when he looked up for a second it was to see that Hornet had stood and was following him towards the easel and paints. The pale glow of her mask was growing brighter, and there was no mistaking the hurry in her pace. His smile faded to a worried look as she drew closer to him and put a hand on his arm; slowly, he set down the bottle of paint again and opened his mouth as though to ask a question.

“I think I’ll wake soon,” she whispered to him before he could bring himself to say anything. “I’m sorry. If I could stay asleep longer for you, I would.” She hesitated. “Do you know what will happen to you when I’ve returned to the waking world…?”

The Watcher’s heart skipped a beat. He racked his memory, trying to recall exactly what state he had been in before finding himself in his alcove. “I’m not sure,” he said. “I think I recall...thoughts...or being surrounded by thought and wind. I don’t think I was quite awake or asleep, but I was...definitely _something._ ” He looked down at the stone tablet in his hand before dejectedly setting it on the edge of the dais next to them. “I think I’ll be fine. Don’t...don’t apologize for leaving a Dream, Hornet; it’s probably for the best that the living don’t linger here without, uh, protection of some kind.” He patted the stone upon which his body had once lain. Then a thought struck him all at once. “Herrah. Your mother! If you summoned _me_ here by thinking of me, surely you could--”

“It didn’t work,” Hornet interrupted. The glow of her mask was increasing quickly; Lurien suspected that it would be blinding were this the waking world. “I attempted that near the beginning of this dream. I wish I could have seen her again, but...I’m happy to have been able to speak to you, at least. You are a wonderful bug, Lurien.”

He leaned away slightly at the compliment, stuttering. “Thank you,” he managed. “And you--you’re--” As he weakly nodded, Hornet could feel his arm under her hand beginning to fade. Her vision was beginning to be whited out by her own mask; she had to squint to see him. “...Daughter of Herrah, Queen of Hallownest, champion of its citizens,” he managed. “Better than the King ever was. On your own terms, I venerate…”

* * *

 

When the white faded from her vision, Hornet found herself precariously slumped in a comfortable chair in the alcove below. The latest journal she had read had slid from her grip entirely and lay on the ground beneath her feet. Feeling painfully stiff from her awkward position and more than a little embarrassed, she slid out of the chair and to her unsteady feet.

It had been an odd dream, she reflected as she stretched a little. Perhaps she had allowed herself to become too invested in the Watcher’s journals. At the very least, falling asleep while reading them had been a poor idea, yet she didn’t find herself regretting it--at least, not because of the dream. The pain in her back from a night of bad posture was her main complaint.

In fact, she decided as she stepped out of the alcove and leaped for the lip of the elevator shaft again, she had quite enjoyed that dream. The image of Lurien that her mind had conjured had been a joy to speak with, his initial moment of awe because of her parentage notwithstanding. The happiness with which he had taken to sketching her had been infectious. Hornet considered his obvious infatuation and wondered about her own ego, but realized even as she did that it had been far from unwelcome. The bug took to love so easily, she reflected. And she wondered, again, if she could follow that example.

She made herself tea (a leaf that had been collected in the Queen’s Gardens and was now one of the most sought-after commodities in the small kingdom) in her ramshackle kitchen and tried to take her mind off of the dream, but even as she sipped at the steaming cup she found her mouth forming a smile despite her efforts. _If that’s the sort of dream I have when I fall asleep reading,_ she thought, _perhaps I will have to find something Mother wrote. Or perhaps I should look into those stories that that Dirtmouth bug is writing--no, definitely not._ She took a longer drink of her tea, but then by chance laid eyes on the dais that dominated the room, and her smile evaporated completely as she saw a dark blue circle of material on the far side of it. She stared for a minute, her thoughts completely silenced by shock, and then gasped.

The cup was set down with a clatter; in a single jump Hornet had leaped over the dais and whirled to look at the tablet upon it. In white ink, unmistakable and not yet fully dry, was a simple but masterful picture of her, sitting on the edge of her cot with her arms on her knees, facing slightly to the right yet looking directly at the painter. Her mask was fully colored white; she distinctly remembered that Lurien hadn’t yet colored her cloak, yet the garment in this picture was colored the same crimson that she wore now.

The care put into its composition took her breath away. The attention paid to the shape of her horns, the edges of her eyes, made them exactly as elegant as the Hallownest buildings in the painting now behind her. Hornet had never considered herself beautiful--not out of self-doubt; it had simply never occurred to her--but looking down at the painting before her, it was clear that its painter had, and all she could do was stare.

 _I venerate you._ The echo flitted through her mind as she picked up the portrait with both hands, as carefully as though expecting it to turn to dust. Holding it closely, closing her eyes, Hornet whispered, “And I you, Lurien the Watcher.”


End file.
